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Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) Registrar, has admitted that there were errors in the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) which affected candidates across different centres in the country.
Oloyede fought back tears as he made the admission during a media briefing in Abuja on Wednesday, May 14, 2025.
He announced that no fewer than 379,997 candidates in the just concluded academic exercise would retake the examination, following widespread complaints of technical glitches, unusually low scores, and alleged irregularities in the questions and the answers during the exercise.
The JAMB Registrar apologised to affected candidates and their parents and reaffirmed that the examination body would continue to accept responsibility when it fails.
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Recall that the 2025 UTME statistics breakdown showed a mass failure for participating candidates, raising questions about the country's falling education standards.
In the results released by JAMB on Friday, May 9, 2025, over 1.5 million candidates scored below 200, which is considered the average benchmark.
Oloyede had noted that 12,414 of the over 1.9 million who sat the UTME scored 300 and above, with only 4,756 scoring 320 and above.
In comparison, 1.9 million candidates sat for the 2024 edition, of which only 8,000 candidates, or 0.5 per cent, scored above 300 points in the examination.
However, the Registrar admitted on Wednesday that the mass failure was caused by glitches in 157 centres across the country.
He said all affected candidates will retake the exams this coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Lagos and other centres in the South-East. In contrast, any candidate with a clashing timetable will be rescheduled.
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"We have decided that all the candidates affected in the 157 centres out of 882 centres will be contacted to retake their examinations starting from Friday, May 16, 2025.These candidates are to be contacted through text messages addressed to their registered phone numbers, their email addresses, their profiles and phone calls by JAMB. They are directed to reprint their Examination Slips for the rescheduled examination dates," he said.